178. When you wish the evening would never end, you lose the joy of that evening

Have you ever had the thought, while you’re with a really great date, “Oh, I wish this moment – or this evening – would never end?” Or when you’ve been seeing someone for awhile and your relationship is developing in a warm, comforting way you start thinking, almost unconsciously perhaps, “What can I do to make sure this continues as it’s going? I don’t want it to end.”

But have you noticed that in both of those scenarios your freedom to just be spontaneously alive in the moment has slipped away? The peace and joy of living right now has evaporated. The real aliveness and vitality of the moment has been replaced by the stress – subtle as it may be – of trying to hold on to something you’ve got. Instantly, the full joy of Now is gone. The fully-alive energy and happiness of Right Now has been shoved aside by a lifeless fantasy made up of worrisome thoughts.

All experiences have a beginning and an end. They’re finite, not infinite. If they didn’t have some borders they wouldn’t be an experience. Try to picture something with no limits. If it had no beginning and no end we wouldn’t know it existed, much the way we’re not aware of space. Space isn’t an experience, it’s just what you might call Is ness. Limits are what make experiences possible.

On the practical level, if you find yourself hoping an experience will last forever you might question that a bit. Would you really want life to continue, just as it is, forever? Probably not. We thrive on change. I read about an experiment where scientists placed some amoeba, one-celled animals, in an environment where there was no change… and they all died.

When you’re on a really great date, or with a really neat partner, you may find you have a lot more fun, as well as feeling peaceful and content, if you simply enjoy it just as it is, without feeding stressful worries of a future. After all, real life only happens in this moment. It’s timeless. But most of us are seldom home in this moment. We’ve lost the moment to past or future thoughts – thoughts that have no vitality or life.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

177. Heed the Suffer Bell and your dating will be fun, not frazzled

Remember the old Western movies where the supper bell rang when it was time to eat? Well, let me introduce you to the “Suffer Bell”, that emotional suffering that shows up as knots in our stomach or a tight chest. The Suffer Bell also calls us, not to supper but to pay attention. It calls us to notice that we’re judging someone or something. That’s what makes it ring. No judgment, no Suffer Bell.

Even though suffering is painful the Suffer Bell is also a gift because it reminds us to see life as it is, not to agonize and struggle against it. Reality rules. It always wins. The great thing is that we can see this for ourselves. Take a look and you’ll notice that you suffer only when you resist “what is”. When we also notice that the world works its own way, without an opinion from any of us, we naturally stop trying to give our input. That acceptance of life just as it is allows us to live and date happily and peacefully. When we get used to not judging, the Suffer Bell never rings any more.

Mature dating can be the source of a lot of joy but it can also have its painful sides. When your Suffer Bell rings it invites you to have a look and see what you’re judging and rejecting. What do you think needs to change? How do you think someone needs to be different? As soon as you see that life doesn’t need to change any more than water needs to dry off, your suffering is over and the bell stops clanging.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

176. How do I stop pushing my lover away?

The other day someone posed the question, “How do I change behavior so I don’t keep pushing away the one I love?” It’s a question that could have come from a couple of possible scenarios I can think of. You might be pushing away your lover out of jealousy. Or you might be critical and judgmental.

There may be other reasons too, but fortunately the solution isn’t dependent on “why” you’re turning off your loved one. Also fortunately the answer has nothing to do with needing to change. The answer is only to see the world “as it is” rather than trying to impose on it what we think “should be”.

We cling to a partner in a cloying, sticky way because we want her to stay with us so we can be happy. We judge our lover because we want him to change, so we can be happy. The problem seems to be that we think our happiness is dependent on that person “out there”. The insecure Little Me thinks it needs the world to change so it can be happy. That’s the cause of all the stress and suffering. We’re always fighting to make our life work because our judgments tell us it isn’t working the way it should be.

The answer is as easy as starting with a simple question: Do we really know how things should be? Do they really need to be “our” way? If you’re jealous and clingy you might ask, “Do I truly need to have this person in my life and do I know that’s the best thing for me?” If you’re judging you could start with, “Am I absolutely sure this person should be different in what he says or does?”

Or, to go even deeper, you can begin to question the very source of the problem – the Little Me. Is there truly a me inside this body somewhere? What is it that breathes me, beats my heart, circulates my blood, and grows my hair? Where do “my” thoughts come from? Do I decide to think or does thinking happen? If you question like this you begin to see that without the Life Force the “me” I think I am is really just a corpse. It’s the Higher Power, or God if you want, that’s living AS me.

This Life Force seems to have been running the universe forever, so maybe, just maybe, IT knows what it’s doing. Maybe we could settle back and just take life as it comes. Without our story of how it should be, seeing life as it is means simply witnessing the world, without an opinion, without a judgment, without an interpretation, without thinking it needs to change. That world includes our loved one.

Instead of thinking we need to force life and our lover to be the way we want them to be, instead of putting them in a prison we can control, we could just flow with life naturally, like the tides of the ocean and the seasons of the year. There’s a Zen saying I like that seems to fit here: “In the spring, the grass grows by itself.” Or that other saying works here too: “Let go and let God.” Relaxed dating is happy dating. Without judging and clinging it’s also loving dating.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer